There was a time when Rochester sat atop the minor-league sports world with franchises steeped in history or promise, and ballparks filled with fans. In 2005, Rochester placed No. 1 nationally in the inaugural ranking of minor-league markets by Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal.

This year, the local market was No. 70. Instead of adding teams, the city has gotten into the habit of losing them, including the Rochester Lancers (indoor soccer), Western New York Flash (women's soccer), Rochester Rattlers (lacrosse) and potentially the Rhinos — all in the past 2½ years.

Whether the Rhinos end their 22-year run, or take a one-year hiatus, should be known by Friday.

The business has gotten tougher, no doubt, as has the economy. Attendance has fallen. Taxpayer subsidies have risen. And venues are in need of investment. Continued population loss doesn't help, either, and there is more competition for people's time, whether it's youth sports and activities or the ability to watch hundreds of channels and sporting events on television at home, or on your smartphone. That is true for all entertainment segments.

"You have to do a lot more than open the gates and hope people show up," said Dan Mason, longtime general manager for the Rochester Red Wings, the nation's oldest continuously operating minor-league sports franchise dating to 1899.

Rochester's decline is not unprecedented. Roughly half the communities ranked in 2005 and again in 2017 saw their position fall. The median dropoff was 43 spots. Attendance, the churn of teams coming and going, all play a role.

Losing the Rhinos would leave the city with just four teams: the Red Wings (baseball), Americans (hockey), Knighthawks (indoor lacrosse) and RazorSharks (basketball).

"We are still a great sports town," Mason said. "We have avid fans that are supportive of their teams."

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Yet other communities have fared better. Places like Hershey-Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Toledo, Ohio, that retained their status as Top 10 markets. Others, like Binghamton, have climbed from the second tier into the upper echelon, maintaining attendance despite being one of the smallest markets in the American Hockey League. The Rochester Americans play in the same league but also have had attendance issues.

In other locales, people talk about recent facility upgrades, steady ownership and fan support, staying true to an identity and community.

"I don't think there is any real silver bullet. Or we haven't found it," said Tom Mitchell, executive vice president of the Binghamton Devils, an organization that has been in the minor-league sports business since the mid-1980s. "We manage to hang in there."

Hitting the threshold

The Rhinos began play in 1996, and have opened two stadiums — being the first to play in Frontier Field, then a decade later in what is today Capelli Sport Stadium.

But where their tenure at Frontier will go down in soccer lore, drawing big crowds, winning titles and being the only non-Major League Soccer club to win a U.S. Open Cup, their time on Oak Street has been spent in near-perpetual turmoil.

It was in the months before that move, in 2005, that the Sports Business Journal issued its inaugural ranking of minor-league markets. The Rochester sports scene was soaring.

Attendance that year stood at 968,821, with the city's venues at 70 percent capacity. The Steve Donner-led Rochester Sports Group owned the Amerks, Rhinos, Knighthawks (indoor lacrosse) and Rattlers. The basketball RazorSharks were soon to begin play.

The Journal profiled Rochester as a tough sports town with a solid fan base and well-maintained facilities. Naomi Silver, head of the Red Wings then as now, spoke at the time of mutual benefit: "All these events create a more friendly attitude toward sports in general and becomes part of life. It's good to know our community is sports minded."

Rochester's sports teams haven't replicated that combined attendance mark since. This year saw the total hit its lowest mark, at 656,844, a dropoff of more than 300,000 through the turnstiles since 2005, according to the Journal.

For the Rhinos, jumping up to MLS never happened. That turned off some fans. The team also didn't bring back a handful of aging star players before moving down the street. Owners thought the stadium, like Frontier, would attract fans. It didn't.

The stadium opened as PAETEC Park on June 3, 2006, and rain, strong winds and snarled traffic greeted 13,000 fans for a 2-2 tie with Virginia Beach. The night would foreshadow even more stormy times ahead.

The Donner sports empire collapsed. The biggest wrecking ball was a $10.8 million bank loan on which he and his Rhinos co-owners defaulted. The new stadium never had the amenities of Frontier, and has cycled through corporate sponsors, as the Rhinos have churned through owners and coaches. Insurance costs climbed. Relationships with City Hall and others in the market soured. There are endless reasons, second-guessing and finger-pointing.

"Obviously, a lot of franchises have come and gone over the past decade," said David Broughton, research director for the Sports Business Journal, speaking not just of Rochester but markets nationally as he has compiled the biennial rankings.

"If you look at the other markets that consistently do well … they don’t try to be something they’re not," he said.

What struck Broughton back in 2005, was what seemed to be Rochester's sense of identity: "We not only know we are a minor-league market, we embrace that we are a minor-league market," was the shared message from those he interviewed.

Not that it has been easy.

Donner and his partners were insolvent by 2008, the teams were sold off and the soccer stadium reverted to the city. The Rhinos lost nearly $2 million that year, the first under new owner Rob Clark, according to financial records obtained by the Democrat and Chronicle. A banker from Utica, Clark cut back his budget, but in 2014 still posted $450,000 in losses. He was sued by the city for $140,000 in back rent, among other unpaid bills, in the spring of 2015 and officials ousted him that November.

The Red Wings, by comparison, posted their first financial loss at Frontier Field back in 2009, and operate near or below the break-even point more often than not. The Wings' most recent five-year pre-tax annual profit margin stood at $91,000, records show. The team turned a profit of $121,000 in 2016. A big factor is the team's affiliation with the Minnesota Twins, which offsets significant expenses in payroll and insurance that non-affiliated teams like the Rhinos, Lancers and Flash must bear.

"Rochester is a great minor-league market," Broughton said, noting the Red Wings and Amerks have been around a combined 200 years. "What higher measure of support would you have? No other market has that.

"But," he continued, "when you keep trying to add other sports, you can only slice the pie so much. ... Recognize your threshold, and go with your strength."

He isn't convinced, however, that Rochester can't support a third venue, the soccer stadium, along with Frontier and Blue Cross Arena at the Community War Memorial, where the Amerks, K-Hawks and RazorSharks play. So what is the threshold, and the strength?

The Flash left last January, following a championship season. They had some of the world's best young female players and welcomed opponents with U.S. stars such as Alex Morgan. They were based near Buffalo and only played matches in Rochester from 2011-16.

After Clark's lease was terminated, city officials actually offered control of the soccer stadium to the Flash but nixed the deal to stick with the Rhinos. The Flash had planned to move their entire operation to Rochester. To now lose the Rhinos, "would be huge to the history of soccer and the future development of soccer in this community," said Salvatore "Soccer Sam" Fantauzzo, himself an institution of the region's sports scene who once ran the Lancers indoor professional soccer team that folded in July 2015.

Dollars and sense

City officials have declined to comment on what, if any, contingency plan exists should the Rhinos not play next year.

Whether the Rhinos could retain control of the stadium without fielding a team is unclear. Asked about terms of default in the lease, Brian Curran, the city's corporation counsel, said the city would not "take a position on hypothetical possibilities."

The city owns both the soccer stadium and Blue Cross Arena, while the county owns Frontier Field. Direct taxpayer subsidy of the soccer stadium is estimated at $590,000 annually, while city subsidy of Blue Cross Arena stands at $838,000. The county regularly covers far in excess of $1 million in expenses at Frontier Field.

Loss of another franchise certainly would further erode Rochester's stature as a minor-league market. But at what price? Don Jeffries is president and CEO of VisitRochester, the region's main tourism agency and main recipient of hotel room occupancy tax dollars that second-year Rhinos owners David and Wendy Dworkin have sought to tap into.

Currently none of those dollars, which are aimed at supporting tourism, go to support the stadium, while a combined $1.4 million is diverted to aid Frontier Field and Blue Cross Arena. VisitRochester receives $3.3 million of the total $8.1 million pot.

"Our job is to offer visitors a great experience when they get here of the things that we have," Jeffries said. "I compare it (loss of a sports team) to like a restaurant going out of business — you hate to see it, but we have other options."

VisitRochester focuses on amateur and youth sports to encourage visitors to come to the area, he said: "We don't get into the semi-pro teams. We don't run their business, and we don't understand their business. ... I truly don't know the economic impact."

Finding the mojo

If there are keys to success, one is continuity — not just in ownership, but sponsorship and fan base.

"I think it is a little bit about the people who live here, tend to be loyal to the community," said Gregg Cook, executive director for the Hershey Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Sports & Events Authority. "A lot of people are from here and continue to live here."

He grew up in Hershey, rooting for the Bears hockey club, which has been around for 80 years and leads the league in attendance. The team's arena opened in 2002, built in part by team owner and locally based Hershey Entertainment and Resorts Co. The baseball stadium over in Harrisburg was revamped six or seven years ago, and the Senators ballclub also is locally owned, its past owners including the city itself.

The authority provides "a very minor sponsorship" of the hockey and baseball teams, Cook said, explaining: "We want what is here to stay here."

Venue is important. And so is the programming. Team officials talk about "the fan experience," and how much effort goes into making the game an event.

Winning is important, officials say, but not pivotal to success. In Dayton, Ohio, the Dragons baseball team hasn't won a division title since 2011, has never claimed a league title, is a sub-.500 club on average, and has sold out every game in its 18-year existence.

Here in Rochester, the Red Wings have fielded only three playoff teams in two decades.

Blue Cross Arena is in line for a $10 million upgrade. It last was renovated some 17 years ago, and there are concession areas that date from the original construction. Frontier also has proposed a major renovation. And the soccer stadium, though a newer venue, is 11 years old and showing wear.

Frontier Field has been Frontier Field since it opened, and the Silver family has controlled the Wings for 60 years. Blue Cross Arena's naming rights have been locked up since the late 1990s, and will be through at least 2028. The three teams playing there, the Amerks, Knighthawks and RazorSharks, have a combined ownership tenure of 27 years.

"We have a great fan base, great community partners, owners who have been here a long time, relationships with sponsors and season ticket holders," said John Catalano, the Knighthawks' vice president of sales. "I believe that does help. We are out in the community, and people know who we are."

The soccer stadium has undergone four name changes, while the Rhinos have had three owners in 20 years. The Dworkins bought the team in March 2016.

"I've heard more talk about the Rattlers and the Rhinos in the last two weeks than I have in the last two years," said Catalano, who got his start in minor-league sports here with Donner during the Rhinos heyday. "It's unfortunate that it gets to the point the team has to leave for people to think we have to be supporting this."